A Prayer for the Condemned
by mandassina
Summary: In S3E9, "A Dangerous Deal", when Meg brings him food in the dungeon, Guy is kneeling in his cell. What is he doing? What is he thinking?


**Disclaimer: ** _Robin Hood_ doesn't belong to me. It doesn't actually belong to the BBC either. I do believe the legend of Robin Hood is firmly in the public domain. But this story is firmly based on the events of the BBC series starring Richard Armitage, Keith Allen and that short bloke with the scruffy facial hair. ;)

_A Prayer for the Condemned_

Guy knelt on the cold, hard floor of his cell, arms resting on one of the crossbars, hands folded, praying. He hadn't sought succor from the Almighty since he was a child, since the night he discovered his sainted mother was cuckolding his absent father. That night he'd asked God to make her stop, to bring his father safely home to them, and to strike Robert Locksley dead. He got one of his three requests and lost everything in one hellish night.

So he wasn't praying to God now, but to his own, personal saint, one he had created for himself just in the past couple of years. Still, asking for grace, for mercy, for kindness…for help…was a foreign thing to him, and it didn't help that he had already told his chosen intercessor that she didn't exist, that she was nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

Mustering the kind of faith he needed to offer an earnest prayer required such intense concentration that Guy was oblivious to the stench and the dampness of the dungeon, the ache in his bones from having only stone to rest them on, and the gnawing in his gut that came either from hunger or the maggots in his last meal eating them out, take your pick. Had he recognized the brief escape from his personal hell that the deep meditation had afforded him, the irony that it came when he was asking something not for himself, but for another would have amused him. As it was, all he knew was that he wanted this one small thing more than he wanted his next breath.

_She has your heart, Marian_, he said silently in his head, seeking her out in the dark corners of his mind where his dreams had always gone to die. _She can see a spark of goodness in the black void of my soul. I think she must have imagined it, just as I imagined you when I first came back from the Holy Land._

He paused a moment, but there was no answer.

Not that he'd really expected one…at least…not so soon.

_The thing is, Marian, I need you now. More importantly, Meg needs you now. She needs you to help her see sense, to make her understand that I am dangerous, that I will destroy her as I destroy everything I touch. _

Again, he waited for a response and got none.

_Please, Marian,_ he pleaded, and he was truly feeling it now, that utter faith, that belief that she was there and she was real and she could do something and the desperate need for her to do something.

_Please, whisper in her ear, touch her mind or her heart, make her see that I am bad and keep her away from me. Even the very pit of Hell is only so deep, and one more stain upon my soul cannot cast me any further down than I am already destined to go. Please, Marian, don't let me destroy her, as I did you._

Once more, he waited for an answer, a sign, something to tell him she had heard his pleas and would intervene.

Then he heard footsteps on the stairs, looked up to see Meg bringing him food, fresh bread and fruit that was ripe rather than rotten.

_So that's your answer,_ he thought bitterly. _Still, it's no more or less than I deserve. I suppose it's up to me, then._

He wanted to hurl insults at her, to frighten her, to hurt her, to wound her so deeply that she would run out sobbing and hating him as bitterly as she had when she was first cast into the cell beside his; but when she knelt before him on the other side of the bars, weeping with compassion, he didn't have the heart to be so cruel. Instead, he told her she had done enough. He told her what he could about Marian. He told her to go. For someone who had made an art of being a hateful bastard, it was a pathetic effort, but it was the best he could do.

It was, as always, too little and too late.

He'd no more than finished the apple when she was back with the keys.

Of course, they failed to escape, and even the next day at their scheduled execution, when Robin Hood intervened, only on Meg's behalf, certainly not Guy's, it wasn't enough. They got away, but not unscathed.

When she died in his arms out there in the woods, after a sweet, chaste kiss and confessing her fondness for him, he wasn't sure if it had all been a blessing or a curse, but he had almost dared to hope that for once, he had gotten it right.

The End


End file.
